Space, the final frontier. By the end of the civilization phase, you will have enough gold to purchase a UFO and at last space becomes accessible. The UFO is really a swiss army knife, it capable of doing many unrelated things; everything from planet destruction to alien communication and terraforming. The spaceship, like just about everything in spore, is also fully customizable through an editor - the possibilities are tremendous and you should be able to recreate the well known science fiction spaceships with relative ease. The UFO abilities must be purchased and some take a great deal of time to acquire, namely the genesis device - an instant terraformer tool. You will not be able to afford these new devices by simply relying on the income of your home planet. You will have to actively colonize your solar system, if you are lucky it will have hospitable planets otherwise you will have to terraform planets or moons into something capable of supporting life. Even if the planet is not hospitable, you can still have a colony on it by placing it within a snow globe - but income from such a planet is limited until it is terraformed.

A Galactic Civilization

As soon as you purchase the interstellar drive, the UFO will be able to travel outside it’s original solar system. At this point you will get a clear idea of just how massive and open ended Spore really is. According to Will Wright, the Spore galaxy is will have nearly half a million solar systems. Some are inhabited by alien species (some are intelligent) while others are completely barren. Spore has gone to great lengths to connect each player’s single player experience with that of other players around the globe, so these solar systems actually belong, on the most part, to other players. This isn’t a multiplayer game per se, so you won’t be able to affect another player’s game by fooling around in their solar system. However the physical appearance and social attitude of the creatures of these planets will be as the original player intended. This is also means that your home solar system is being transfered to other players and they will be able to see and interact with your own creations.

My Neighbors are Aliens

You will undoubtedly discover alien races during your travels through the galaxy, you can make friends or foes of them. As it is understood right now, most of the interactions between aliens involves trade and diplomacy. How these aliens interact with you is influenced by how you developed your species during the earlier phases. Your goal is to further increase the amount of gold you are raking in, so you must spread your civilization across the cosmos. The more colonies you have, the more resources will be sent to your home world and therefore the more gold you will have at your disposal to upgrade your UFO.

The Story

An underlying story line within the space phase has been mentioned, namely the appearance of an evil alien race called the Grogg. The details are very sparse, but it appears they may protect the something, such as a large black hole, that would effectively allow players to ‘finish’ Spore.

Galactic Warfare

Galactic Warfare is one of those things that has often been alluded to but never confirmed. We’ve heard of statements during Will Wright’s presentation along the lines of “If you did something bad, they may decide to attack your home world” (my words, not his - but something similar). But there has been absolutely zero details regarding what this would look like or if it will even be a feature available at release. My assumption is that there will be galactic warfare, given that it such a key feature that everyone would expect Spore to have - but this is merely an assumption, a guess and not fact. When more is learned about this, I will definitely make an announcement on the front page.